One Piece 1118 Review: Baby Doll

One Piece, Chapter 1118: Being Free

Hmmm, this one was... interesting? We follow up a bit on the Iron Giant, as he falls down and crushes a bunch of Marine ships. Yeah, Topman really doesn't give a shit about his little minions. We do get to listen a bit to truncated parts of Vegapunk's message, and it is something along the lines of "...and their name was..." with clear radio signal interference before and after this phrase. So if this isn't misdirection and actually is the continuation of last chapter's message, then it's likely that it's something along the lines of "among the D. is a [something] and their name was [something]". Which... yeah, get the usual suspects out of the way. There's a god, there's a traitor, there's a saviour, there's a chosen one... I'm honestly not super invested in this part since there's really only so much you can do with it, but it's kind of expected that this D mystery gets dragged on for quite a bit. 

Interestingly, we get internal monologue from the Iron Giant even as he sinks (and in the background you can see the poor Marines' ships sink into the ocean with him) and he's just wondering where Joy Boy went, since all he wanted to do was to cross paths with Joy Boy. It really dose feel like the Iron Giant is fully sentient, which was only vaguely implied previously but this is essentially confirmation. 

Interestingly, the act of headbutting the Iron Giant essentially exposes Topman Warcury in his all his piggy pig pig form before the Marines, who are terrified and confused at the appearance of a truly kaiju-sized monster before them. 

We also cut away to other parts of the world, where we get to see the reactions from the civilians in various cities. The cameos are a bit less interesting; we've got Koza and the rebels from Yuba, Alabasta. We've got Mr. 9 and Ms. Monday (who got married in a cover story in the timeskip, and now have a kid) in Whiskey Peak, and we get Rebecca and Leo in Dressrosa. I suppose the cameos are winding down now, though. We don't really get reactions from these specific characters, but more of the confused mob mentality of the civilians, many of whom are blaming Luffy for killing Vegapunk, mostly because from the little that they know of the World Government, it doesn't make sense in their minds that the W.G. would go and kill their top scientist for the bizarre crime of researching some weird part of history. It's really a nice bit of acknowledging how news and conspiracy theories are so easily moulded by public opinion. 

We cut to York, who's in contact with the Gorosei. York informs them that the two satellites that are still interfacing with Punk Records are Atlas and Lilith... which I guess really confirms that Edison died (or got disconnected) between 1117 and 1118. We get a col panel of the Gorosei splitting up to chase down these two loose ends, which I guess is going to be the final 'chase' part of this island's arc. Brogy and Dorry hop onto the ship, and I do like the little detail of Luffy asking where Usopp is because he knows Usopp is really into the giants. 

Apparently, Bonney had offscreen used her powers on Bluegrass and Doll, turning them into kids, and we get a rather cool panel of her in a superhero-esque pose while holding a gun. I like that we're reminded that she's still a powerful Devil Fruit user and a supernova on top of all the backstory we've just learned about her. 

There's a page-long scene of Sanji checking in on Nami on the Thousand Sunny. We don't quite see any more of the Zoro and Ethan fight, though. Sanji gets this whole gag about how he's going to make sure Nami, Robin and Lilith gets out okay and Usopp takes offense to that. Pretty typical stuff, though I do wonder if this will actually lead somewhere since we just had this whole scene of the Gorosei making it clear their desire to hunt down Lilith. Luffy goes off to consume the feast that some random giant cook is making, while Marcus Mars in his giant demon bird form is swooping down towards the Giant Pirates' ship. 

Marcus goes full-on Moltres, except it's a Flamethrower attack this time instead of a Hyper Beam.Or rather, I guess the huge laser beam that we saw a couple chapters ago is likely to just be super-condensed flame or however the heck that works. Two random giants who get names, Bjorn and Sig, try to block it with some arm-shields but they get knocked down. Again, notably, we get more confused Marines who see the giant bird monster. Really do wonder if these scenes of the Marines reacting to all the monstrosities will be followed up on! 

And then we get the don-do-to-to music, the drums of liberation, with Luffy yelling that his stomach is full and he's ready to go. The seas start moving and going crazy, which I guess is the effect from his Gear Fifth awakening. I like that the poor Marines just get super confused, as if this is the sea levels rising or something.

And we get the final two-page spread as Bonney meets Nika for the first time, and Luffy just tells her to 'believe in herself', leading Bonney to go into a 'Nika-like future' and... transform into a Nika giant? Eh. There is a nice panel with Kuma seemingly flashing back to the line where he tells Ginny that he'll raise Bonney well, and there's another shot of the Iron Giant getting activated because he senses Joy Boy's presence, but... I don't know. Ultimately the whole Nika thing is so weirdly ambiguous and this could all be just a cool moment that doesn't matter much at the end of the day, but I'm not the biggest fan of this transformation or just how quickly Bonney is able to just turn into Nika just with the power of belief and whatnot. I don't hate this twist, but I do confess that my reaction mostly boiled down to "but why?" when I saw the final two-page spread. I dunno. I felt like we could've done more to foreshadow this twist or this power-up, or at least make it feel more earned. 

Random Notes:

• Holy Inari Pilgrimage Yamato Cover Story: Yamato sure is eating some stuff while she's leaving the flower capital. Man, this cover story is very slow. 
• So what is the Iron Giant? Artificial intelligence (i.e. a real robot who developed a 'soul'), someone who ate some Devil Fruit and got trapped in it, a Klebautermann, a member of a now-extinct race, or what? 
• That one random Marine who mistakes Topman for a mammoth must be thinking of the Pokemon Mamoswine. 
• With Edison getting a dramatic sacrifice; and both Stella Vegapunk and Shaka getting on-screen deaths, I guess poor Pythagoras got the absolute least respect out of all of the satellites. 
• Apparently one of the giants had off-screen recovered the figurehead that Ethanbaron sliced off a couple chapters ago and tied it back with some rope. Nice little detail. 
• Kashi's still alive! He's beaten up, but he's still alive, and Oimo and Luffy have a bit of a scene with them.
• I guess the Vegapunk-style sci-fi suits just gets transformed to both Luffy and Bonney's "default" outfit whenever they transform into Nika mode?